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In:Crossroads Semantics: Computation, experiment and grammar
Edited by Hilke Reckman, Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng, Maarten Hijzelendoorn and Rint Sybesma
[Not in series 210] 2017
► pp. 107–123

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Chapter 7
Frequential test of (S)OV as unmarked word order in Dutch and German clauses

A serendipitous corpus-linguistic experiment

 | Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen | Cognitive Psychology Unit, Leiden University
 | Department of Computer Science, University of Koblenz-Landau
Published online: 12 April 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/z.210.07kem
Abstract
In a paper entitled “Against markedness (and what to replace it with)”, Haspelmath argues “that the term ‘markedness’ is superfluous”, and that frequency asymmetries often explain structural (un)markedness asymmetries (Haspelmath 2006). We investigate whether this argument applies to Object and Verb orders in main (VO, marked) and subordinate (OV, unmarked) clauses of spoken and written German and Dutch, using English (without VO/OV alternation) as control. Frequency counts from six treebanks (three languages, two output modalities) do not support Haspelmath’s proposal. However, they reveal an unexpected phenomenon, most prominently in spoken Dutch and German: a small set of extremely high-frequent finite verbs with unspecific meanings populates main clauses much more densely than subordinate clauses. We suggest these verbs accelerate the start-up of grammatical encoding, thus facilitating sentence-initial output fluency.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.Three frequential tests
  • 4.Discussion: Time and fluency pressures can boost VO:OV ratios
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (20)
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Pérez-Guerra, Javier
2022. Determinants of exaptation in Verb-Object predicates in the transition from Late Middle English to Early Modern English. In Broadening the Spectrum of Corpus Linguistics [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 105], ► pp. 133 ff. DOI logo
Kempen, Gerard & Karin Harbusch
2019. Mutual attraction between high-frequency verbs and clause types with finite verbs in early positions: corpus evidence from spoken English, Dutch, and German. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 34:9 ► pp. 1140 ff. DOI logo

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